Sicilian Housewife gives her Husband two Black Eyes

Hubby and I had just flopped blissfully into bed from parenting-induced exhaustion. When our kiddo has a cold, he makes sure the suffering is dished out fairly and evenly among all persons present. I believe some people can finish running a marathon with more energy than we had after a day of making lemon and honey, fetching tissues, running warm bubble baths and giving “morale-boosting cuddles” to our nine-year-old.

It was going to be like this…

I decided to lean over and kiss Hubby goodnight on the cheek before collapsing unconscious. (Once you’ve become a parent, a peck on the cheek is sometimes all you want from your Latin Lover.)

…or perhaps this…

It was dark. It was PITCH dark. As I raised myself blindly on one elbow and lunged over towards Hubby’s dear, stubbly face resting on his pillow, my head was abruptly halted by a solid object in mid-air. There was a heart-stoppingly loud cracking sound, like railway sleepers splitting in a fire, followed by shrieks of pain from Hubby.

The solid object had been Hubby’s bonce. He had decided at that very moment to lean over towards me and give me a little goodnight peck on the cheek, too.

I personally have a skull so thick it makes that of a Doberman look fragile. I could probably use it to smash reinforced concrete. I suffered no tangible damage from the impact other than mild whiplash injury to the neck.

Meanwhile Hubby was not faring so well. We conducted an emergency check of his proud Roman nose to see if it was broken, which basically consisted of me getting hold of it and wagging it slowly from side to side. It seemed firmly fixed on in a way I would describe as geostationary, but the tears were streaming down hubby’s cheeks from sheer agony and there was swelling around his eyes which inflated by the second.

Next I made him sit up facing me and follow my finger with both eyes as I moved it from side to side. I was pretty sure his eyes were moving independently of each other and that the left one was basically turning outwards whilst the right one had a tendency to drift towards the heavens.

He started swaying around alarmingly at this point, so I hastily made him lie down flat again.

By the morning his eyes could hardly open and he looked as if he had been lynched by a gang armed with bicycle chains and hammers. The whole upper half of his face was aubergine coloured with flecks of bright blue, and a few blood blisters bulging under the skin. His nose was red and purple. He appeared to have a mild concussion, and he definitely had two black eyes.

Yes, folks. I blacked both his eyes at once.

What Hubby looked like in the morning

“I think I should take you to hospital,” I suggested, anxiously.

“No way,” he insisted. “I just need a paracetamol and I’ll be fine.”

He waved me away as I fretted over him, tried to spoon-feed him breakfast, and followed him into the bathroom so I could catch him if he fainted. I think he really wanted to keep me at arms’ length, just in case I tried to make any more overt gestures of affection.

I heard him let out a gasp of pain as he rammed his crash helmet on downstairs, then the familiar roar of his motorbike as he zoomed off towards the main road into Palermo.

I phoned him at work when I estimated he should have arrived. Apparently he had been greeted with gasps of shock from all his colleagues, and bombarded with questions about how he had been injured. Everyone assumed he had been knocked off his motorbike.

He works in the Palermo Palace of Justice, and a couple of the baristers he knows well offered him free legal representation if he needed to sue anyone.

“No, actually my wife did it to me,” he told them all, trying to hide his glee. One of his colleagues, whose identity I shall protect with the code name Gullible Galioto, responded,

“Oh, I’m so sorry! She seems so normal when you meet her socially.” Hubby just raised one of his maroon, bloated eyebrows and said nothing.

“I didn’t realise she was secretly a psycho,” Gullible Galioto went on.

“The diary is filled with biting wit, an astute knack for observation and a powerful sense of determination which makes it a joy to read. Di Grigoli’s strong personality comes out as she deftly sketches out the intricacies of life on the complex island of Sicily at the heart of the Mediterranean.”

Reminds me of a Greek Easter game where you tap each others egg end to end to see who cracks first. You won. Give your husband a rematch at Easter- eggs only. Another note, my friend is married to a Roman (born and raised in Rome). He is the most shy and non complaining Italian I have ever met. I always ask Carlo if he’s really Italian. Takes pain quietly, never yells, etc. I guess we all stereotype to a certain degree.

Yes, doing round two with Easter eggs sounds like a great idea! If I head-butt my poor Hubby like that one more time I might give him brain damage!
You’re right, we do stereotype – there are always exceptions. My husband says I am as un-English as he is un-Italian.

haha reminds me of the time I went on a first date with a guy I really liked, as I sat on his car my skirt became tangled on the seat belt as I was pulling on the fabric, and he was bending to try to see what was the problem, my arm sprung free and I gave him a split lip, as you can imagine, that was the first and last date for us!

Ha ha! I love that story, exactly the kind of thing I would do!
Actually my hubby did something to me with the car a few years ago.
We were putting things in the boot and, just when it was ready to close, I looked in to check something was placed right, and he smashed the lid down on my head!
I was seeing stars the whole way home!!!